Physical hierarchy and ownership

How to Read an EDI 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice

Follow ST through SE while preserving every physical owner and lexical source value.

Published and reviewed September 8, 2026

Start with exact ST01=846 and resolve the release from envelope evidence. Public support covers generic 004010, 004030, and 005010. GS08 is primary; ST03 is unavailable in 004010 and optional in 004030/005010. ISA11 is a standards identifier in 004010 and a repetition separator in 004030/005010.

Read the physical hierarchy in order

  1. ST opens the transaction.
  2. BIA supplies purpose, report type, reference, and date context.
  3. Header parties, references, contacts, dates, measurements, and code lists remain header-owned.
  4. Each physical LIN begins one item context.
  5. QTY carries lexical quantity qualifier evidence and owns its nested SCH, dates, measurements, references, and code lists.
  6. SDQ carries paired destinations and quantities under its physical owner.
  7. SCH remains physical schedule evidence; SLN stays nested under LIN and never creates another canonical row.
  8. Item parties, references, contacts, and dates remain item-owned.
  9. CTT is source-reported summary evidence; SE closes the transaction.

Understand canonical row grain

One physical LIN produces one INVENTORY_ITEM row. Repeating evidence is encoded as compact JSON collection strings: 28 top-level Count/Occurrences pairs and 25 nested collection paths. When a transaction has no LIN, one SUMMARY fallback row preserves applicable header and summary context.

Keep ownership and fallback explicit

Product identifiers stay qualifier-driven and in physical order. Item-local parties populate same-role aliases before header same-role parties; when the nearer source is present but blank, that blank wins. QTY, SDQ, and SCH are not merged, totaled, or reconciled. Duplicate physical occurrences remain distinct.

Read values as evidence, not conclusions

Identifiers, lexical decimals, leading zeros, plus/minus-shaped text, descriptions, marks, and proprietary codes remain strings. The 846 describes source-reported inventory evidence, not inventory accuracy, available or sellable stock, shortage, surplus, ATP, allocation, or fulfillment readiness.

Inspect an 846 without losing qualifier context

Open the browser-local EDI Parser to compare canonical rows with Raw Mode, inspect the EDI 846 field reference, or review the 846 validation scope. The related EDI 852 overview explains why product activity reporting is not interchangeable with an inventory inquiry or advice.